


Thankful

by Gildedmuse



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, One Shot, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Post-Canon, Prompt Fill, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 18:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18665938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Mark has a lot to be thankful for, like starving and death and a girlfriend who is a lesbian.





	Thankful

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to LJ in 2007 for the prompt "Orange"]

**Thankful**

  
“And all the trees,” Roger says, waving his hand around in a vague motion towards the window of the loft that over looks the street. “Turning brown and orange and purple and… What are other fall colors?”  
  
“Look in the basket,” Mimi suggests, then just sighs and tells him so he can’t whine about it. “Red.” She snuggles up to Roger with her eyes closed, like she can see the trees with her face pressed into Roger’s shoulders. Light hurts her eyes, too much for her to look outside in the bright afternoon sun as it makes a lame attempt to warm the cool autumn air. It wouldn’t matter, even if Mimi weren’t half blind. They’re in alphabet city, so she sure isn’t going to see them through the window that Roger is pointing to. “A dark red, though. Maroon, I guess.”  
  
“Right,” Roger mutters, and his own eyes fall closed as he lounges out across the couch. His head falls back on Collins’ shoulder, and he just laughs, letting Roger rest there. Smoke falls out of Collins’ mouth, filling the room with small wisps and curls of the pot. It’s almost artistic. Curled up on the chair like he is, Mark can take a deep breath and get a contact high, just from what is already in the air around him. It’s more peaceful than anything Thanksgiving he ever had back home.  
  
Mark is thankful for the following things:  
  
1\. That he is in New York, center of the arts and life and everything imaginable can be found here with the right connections. That is what it is about in the city, making connections and staying afloat. It is so easy to drown, to get lost in the motion of others lives and ambitions, and the homeless are spit on for asking for spare change. Where to be an artist is to be scum, and to be actual scum is to be rich and successful. Where even with vision, an idea, a twisting notion that should reach and change the rest of the world, it is nothing with the right name attached to it, the proper backing and selling of the idea so that by the time it reaches the masses it is just a flimsy excuse or pop culture.  
  
2\. That he is starving. Mark didn’t even know how hungry he could get until he went a week without food. Hell, he didn’t even know you could go a week without eating and still get up in the morning and go about living. His stomach is conditioned, though, to go a while without food. Starving artist takes on a while other meaning when you’re actually starving. It isn’t romantic or poetic. It hurts. There are some days when the cramps are so bad that Mark has actually considered getting a real job, just so he would have some money to buy food. He never gives in to that, though, and when his parents send him cash, only one third of it ever seems to go to groceries, including alcohol.  
  
3\. The girl that he loves is a lesbian. Right now, Maureen is curled up against Joanne like a kitten, laughing at Collins as he makes Roger’s hair into a Mohawk and Mimi bites on her lip to stay silent as she watches. She cheated on him, broke her heart, and then out of nowhere (okay, they had threesomes with other girls and Mark should have known, but he’d still like to think that it was out of nowhere) she declared herself gay. And she did that to him, even though he loved her and stayed with her despite the cheating and all that shit that Mark got through because, damnit, he loved her. She just didn’t really love him back.  
  
4\. His dad hasn’t talked to him in years. In fact, his whole family is still pretty pissed. He dropped out of college and moved into a loft to squat in the middle of the city without a job or a degree of any sort, wasting all that money his parents sent to get him to Brown in the first place. Yeah, of course they’re a little pissed. Even his mom is put up with him, and he can tell through her pleasant tone that she thinks Mark has made the biggest mistake a boy can make of their live. And maybe he has. He is jobless, foodless, and over all fucked.  
  
5\. He’s seen quite possibly the sweetest girl in the world die. That isn’t an easy thing to watch. That isn’t a moment he could step behind his camera to witness, isn’t something he was able to hide from. Angel was the sort of girl that every one wants to meet, beautiful and kind and unafraid to be herself. She was a muse for Mark, a friend to Mimi, and support for Collins. She still is, even now, but it isn’t the same. Of course it isn’t, and no one has to say it but as they sit around the loft, staring at the pile of leaves that Mimi and Maureen had arranges into a quick orange and brown and purple and maroonish red center piece, they’re all thinking that Angel could do better. Her absences is like a presents that sits beside Collins on the couch, hanging over him and pulling him down. It hovers over Mark’s shoulder, pushing him to do more than just watch over his friends from a distance.  
  
6\. His friends are sick. There is no denying this. Before Angel, it was easy to try and not think about it. Sure, April died but she did that to herself. HIV wasn’t a death sentence, Mark use to tell himself and Roger when he was sober enough to listen. It meant that Roger was sick but it didn’t mean that he was going to die. It got harder to ignore when Angel died, and with how sick Mimi has been. It’s a miracle she’s made it this long, almost a full year. Miracle that she is alive, but she certainly isn’t healthy. Right now she is coughing into Roger’s shoulder, and everything in the room stops as they look at her. Roger opens his eyes, holding her closer and stroking her back until she’s calm down. She looks up at him, face ashen and covered in bruises and bumps. Not young and beautiful like she should be. Not healthy like she should be, and Roger has to force a smile back. Mark can see he’s worried, Mark can see he knows. That this is it, and no miracle will get her through another year. Then again, Roger is already too thin, and he wears clothes that hide the lesions but it’s hard to hide something from a watchful roommate.  
  
So when it’s all put together, Mark has everything to be thankful for. Being alone and lost and swallowed whole by the city, left poor and starving for his art, without the support of his family, and his friends’ health quickly failing. He hasn’t finished his movie, he lost the girl he loved, and he lives in a beat up loft on the graces of a guy who use to be his friend before he became just another yuppie asshole.  
  
“I like it,” Roger says, leaning forward and plucking out an orange leaf. He lays it on Mimi’s hair, and she beams back at him. With her cracked lips and ashen complexion, she still has the smile of a child. The sort of wonderful look that lights up her whole face as she lifts her head, and the leaf tumbles to the ground.  
  
“I like you,” she tells him, and she pats down his hair from the mess that Collins had made of it. Roger frowns and tips his head back as if to see what she is doing. Beneath the pile of limbs that is Roger and Mimi, Collins laughs, ruffling his hair right back up.  
  
“If you like it so much, stop picking at it,” Maureen says, bending down to pick up the pile of leaves that Roger had picked from their hand made center piece, and almost toppling off Joanne’s lap as she does, proving that Mark isn’t the only one getting high off whatever Collins is smoking. She laughs as Joanne grabs for her, pulling her back on the chair. “Thank you baby.”  
  
“No problem, honey bear,” Joanne says, kissing her and they giggle as their lips touch, curling back onto the chair, as private as they can get as the rest of the room watches them. Not that Maureen would ever complain about being the center of attention.  
  
“Mark,” Roger says, snuggling back in to place, laying across the couch with Mimi on top of him, resting his back against Collins arm. Collins just looks down at Mimi, rolling his eyes, making her giggle. “Share the meal, huh?”  
  
“What?” Mark frowns for a moment as he tries to catch up, distracted by the kissing in the chair next to him. Roger catches his eye and laughs at him, loud and open because he just knows what Mark is thinking about. Rolling his eyes, Mark grabs their feast – a bottle of vodka, and rolls it over to the couch. “Asshole,” he mutters, and Roger just smirks at him as Mimi picks up the bottle.  
  
Mark is thankful for the following things:  
  
That he can honestly say he wouldn’t change a thing, not a single one. Not the disease, not the lack of a finished film, not Maureen being… Well, Maureen. Maybe that is selfish, to say that even if he could he won’t go back, edit out the parts of his life that make it unbearable, because he wouldn’t want to miss out on any of this. He wouldn’t make Roger healthy, if it means that Roger and Mimi couldn’t be together, or change time so that he wouldn’t have to see Angel die, if it would mean that he couldn’t know her at all.  
  
It’s definitely a little bit selfish, Mark thinks as he watches Roger and Mimi share a shot, wincing as it burns, and Collins going back to playing with Roger’s hair, and Maureen crawl into Joanne’s lap. He needs them all more than he needs money or a feature film.   
  
Mark is thankful to spend his thanksgiving in a freezing cold loft with no food or family, because even without all those big things, he’s got all the little things he could ever need. And that makes it worth it.


End file.
